This series of articles features postcards sent by Edgar Pedley, serving in the Signals Corps during World War One. The postcards were sent from both the theatre of war and from stations in England whilst training or on leave. They were sent home to his friend Arthur Storr and Arthur's wife, Fanny, with whom Edgar lived as a lodger.
Click each of the photographs below to read the articles.
I know! A full month without a post! You lucky people! But here I am again, having spent a number of weeks with my brother trying to get to a state where we could sort out the probate following the death of my unmarried uncle. Until that happens there will be scant news of the process and findings, but I now know where my hoarding genes come from. Not just the collections of my uncle but of family members I have only just found out about... I never knew the names of my great-grandparents until we started on this, but now I've started to draw up a family tree. How long before I find myself out on a limb, I wonder...
Anyway, I can't see any harm in having a quick look at some postcards from the 20th century that various family members sent or received. There could be more of these to come...
Sent home to Castleton, Rochdale from Southport by my Great-Grandad to my Great-Grandma who, for whatever reason, had been left at home. 24 September 1906. "Arrived safe about 1/2 past 1 o'clock. The weather is grand here. Yours W.T.B."
W.T.B. was William Thomas Burke, my Great-Grandfather. He's not exactly pouring his heart out here, but it would be too easy and perhaps unfair to draw conclusions from so few words. Funny though that I never even knew his name until now... The rides are long since gone from Southport, but just up the coast in my own home town of Blackpool the Pleasure Beach still has their own version of Sir Hiram Maxim's Flying Machine still in operation. Sir Hiram originally wanted to install controls so that riders could send the gondolas up or down but with thoughts of cars stalling and diving or simply being too low when the ride slowed and crashing into the landing stage, the request was denied, leading to the designer dismissing the ride as "merely a roundabout".
Sent by "Emily" to my Great-Aunt Cissie on 19 August 1907. "Dear Cissie, I arrived on Saturday at 11:30am. Enjoying myself very well and I hope you are, though you are at home. The weather is nice so I hope to return in the best of health. Your affectionate friend, Emily." Cissie was my Grandad Burke's sister.
Another Blackpool postcard sent by my Great-Great-Aunt Florrie home to her mother in Rochdale on 22 August 1907. "Dear Mother, I am still enjoying myself. Yesterday we went on the Helter Skelter and got stuck in the middle. On Thursday we kept having showers, but never keeps us in. Florrie". Florrie Woolfenden was the sister of my Great-Grandmother on my paternal grandmother's side.
Manchester Piccadilly - somewhat different to the present day! This card was another sent by "Emily" to my Great-Aunt Cissie in Castleton, Rochdale on 29 November 1907. "Dear Cissie, I was glad to hear from you and will meet you at quarter to seven. Please bring programme if for entrance. All are well, have plenty of time to talk tomorrow, your loving friend Emily." Cissie at this time would have been aged somewhere between 10 and 14 I think. I only remember her as a quite wrinkled old lady who had never married and who chain smoked unfiltered cigarettes. I rather think though that she was quite a character during her youth and there's a super photo of a very confident young woman in full 1920s flapper-style complete with head dress that will no doubt find its way onto the blog at some point.
Five years later Cissie sent this card from Colwyn Bay back to her mother (my Great-Grandma Burke) in Castleton, Rochdale on 17 August 1912. "Dear Mother, Arrived here quite safely, got lovely digs. Rained here this afternoon, fine now. We are rather a long way from Colwyn Bay centre but in a nice position lovely scenery. With love from Cissie."
A local postcard sent from their home town on 7 September 1961 by my Grandad and Uncle Geoff to my Grandma who was on holiday at Morecambe Bay Holiday Camp, Heysham. "Dear Mum, Hope you are having a good time. Have you won anything at you know what? We expect to arrive on Saturday between 2-00 and 2-30. Love Geoff and Dad"
The mention of winning refers to whist drives - she would play every night if possible and would sometimes tut or grumble under her breath if my Mum and Dad insisted we play for matchsticks not pennies when she played cards with me and my brother when we were small! Yet she would have gone mad at the thought of gambling in any other way. Inflation has gone mad here - all the postcards from 1906-12 were sent for a ha'penny (a halfpenny - pre-decimal coinage. 24 of them would be the equivalent to a 5p coin today, though that ignores inflation). In 1961 it cost tuppence ha'penny or 2½d, equivalent to 0.521 pence of today's money without inflation. Just to be clear, that's £0.00521 pence... Add in the effects of inflation and today it costs 56p to send a postcard second class or 65p first class. There was only one class of postage in 1961 and post was delivered twice a day.
Comments on a postcard please...
Today we'll take a look at some old postcards from my collection. These have all come from antique stalls at GB Antiques in Lancaster from a recent visit. The Edwardians were great ones for postcards. There was no email and alternatives were expensive. Postcards were a little cheaper than writing a letter and much cheaper than sending a telegram. Telephones had been invented in the 1870s but only started to become popular after World War One when prices came down and in any case telephones that you could carry in your pocket were a long way off yet.
Cameras too were expensive and few and far between as yet. Telephones in the early 1900s were totally rubbish at taking photos. To take photos of people on the not-very-sensitive film of the day, they had to sit still for anything up to two minutes. Many commercial photographers would have special clamps that they would attach to the back of your head so you couldn't move whilst the photo was taken. If you were of a mischievous bent, you could look one way for half the time and then the other way for the other half whilst your head remained steady in the clamp and the photo would look like you had two pupils in each eye! Try doing that with you iPhone! Hah! So with no telephones and very few cameras, people on holiday bought postcards. Sometimes to send to their friends saying things like "Wish you were here" - mostly a lie, but it was cheaper if you only wrote four words... Sometimes, in fact many times, postcards were bought to be kept by the buyer and stuck into an album as a souvenir of the holiday. Which explains why there are so many early postcards with no writing on them. Like this one of Bridlington.
Move up the coast from Bridlington and you come to Scarborough. This card too has not been used. People would hold postcard parties where postcard albums were passed round and used to re-live the excitement of a holiday. Later you would take your own photos and show friends and family your photos on slide film, with a projector and screen in a darkened room. Oh what fun we had... Now we don't have to do that as there are new ways through technology of boring our friends and even people we don't know, via websites and writing er... blogs... er... let's move on!
Postcard manufacturers realised that they could use more than one view on a single card in an attempt to appeal to the natural stinginess of some holiday makers. This card was sent between two sisters who it seems had each gone on holiday but to different places. The postmark is a little indistinct but it was sent on 17 August in either 1913 or 1915. I suspect 1913 really because the other sister had sailed to the Isle of Man and during wartime that might have been a bit more risky! The card was sent care of the recipient's guest house in Douglas.
The message reads: "Dear Sister," (Perhaps the sender was a bit forgetful and couldn't remember her sister's name?) "We arrived safely after a pleasant journey. Are enjoying ourselves immensely. Hope you are doing the same and I hope you had a pleasant voyage. Give my kindest regards to Janey. Your loving sis, Alice xxxxxxxxxxx" (Alice obviously was worried her sister might also be forgetful and either forget she had a sister or didn't realise that Alice was her sister?)
A postcard of Great Yarmouth with hand colouring and a painted cloudscape. Buildings and other details have been picked out in ink. These tricks of the trade are one of the joys of collecting old postcards for me. Night time shots that are just darkened and painted over photos that were taken in broad daylight, with obvious shadows from the sun, the moon in the wrong direction and cars with headlights shining the wrong way are great fun. This card has not been written on or sent through the post, so another collector's item.
A between the wars postcard showing The Pier and Sands, New Brighton. The water is the River Mersey rather than the sea and it's Liverpool that you can see across on the far bank. A collection of masts or cranes and derricks on the left side are on Liverpool Docks. The pier acts as a means of boarding steamers for a trip across the river or up and down the coast.
The card was sent by a child to her aunt in Deepdale, Preston on 12 August 1935. It reads: "Dear Aunty, We landed quite safely and the weather is lovely and we are having a glorious time. We have been in the water all the time and the lodgings are posh. Yours sincerely, Jean." It was quite common for Lancashire folks to say "landed" meaning simply "arrived". I suspect Jean didn't fly from Preston to New Brighton... Also to many people from industrial towns, guest houses did seem posh - some had a toilet on every landing for Pete's sake! At this time many people would still be using a toilet in a little out-house in the back yard.
Another unused card showing the Saxon water mill at Guy's Cliffe in Warwickshire. Postcards were produced at first by small family-owned studios by a single photographer, but then as they became more and more popular some very large firms came into being, employing photographers to take photographs of a region or even around the entire country. Francis Frith is still a very well known and recognisable brand. Tucks, Salmon, John Hinde Studios, Valentine & Sons, and many others sprang up to fulfil the demand.
A multi-view card by Valentines from Ilkley in Yorkshire sent on 10 September 1954 to a friend in Lytham St Annes in Lancashire. Somehow the card managed to get postmarked twice - once in Leeds and once, the day after, in... er... Ilford. Folks in Ilkley were obviously not quite sure where Lancashire was...? The postmark includes a post office advert that reads: "Save time. Buy 2½d stamps in books, 3'9d a book" (3 shillings and ninepence - 18.75 pence).
The message reads: "Ilkley 10/9/1954. Up north again, this time to Ilkley where my friends from Leeds have moved to. The country is wonderful round here isn't it? How are the ballet activities your way? I've been twice to Festival Ballet this summer. Bye now and best wishes from Pam."
To finish with for this article we'll go down to the far south of the country to Dover. On this card, sent in 1918, there are still masted sailing ships in Dover Harbour, though most of the vessels here sport the funnels of steam power. There is at least one paddle steamer with side paddle wheels to be found. The castle makes for a dramatic horizon towards the right of the photograph.
The card could easily be from a returning soldier, writing home to his mother in Glasgow. It was written in pencil in a very neat hand: "Dear Mother, I have arrived safe at Dover alright, so I am getting on champion. I met Mary at the station, so she was telling me that she doesn't like her new job. Well this is only a P.C. but I'll write a long letter on Sunday. I remain your affectionate J.M. Rae Dov(er)"
One day last week we had a trip to one of the large antiques warehouses in the area and I bought a few items to bring home with me.
These came from more than one stall, but there's a 78 rpm record - regular readers will know I'm partial to them - four 45 rpm E.P.s, 28 postcards and one other item that we'll have a look at later.
The 78 rpm record is one that I've coveted for quite a while. Anyone who remembers children's TV from the days of Black & White TV would recognise this straight away. And I wouldn't mind betting that the song and exact words are going through your heads at the moment!
The 78 records made of shellac were very brittle. They broke if dropped or sat on and in the 1950s they came to be replaced by smaller records made of vinyl. Smaller because the spiral of the groove was tighter and required a smaller stylus that even now many people call a needle.
They were very hard to break, but sadly for the collector were very easy to scratch. And it's not always apparent that they might be damaged in a small area enough to make the needle bounce out of the groove into a different part of the spiral. Unfortunate for me because despite a close look at them in the shop, they all "jump" at some point.
But just because they jump now, doesn't necessarily mean they are designated for the bin. I'll have a go at washing them first, taking care not to wet the labels. Years of dust and finger grease, not to mention lumps of sticky toffee being dropped on them, sometimes means that the damage is not a scratch but a build up of material causing a blockage inside the groove. Fingers crossed!
The postcards are a real mix. There are comic cards and picture postcards ranging from the 1910s to the 1970s. Some are from our own country and some, like this 1954 card of an erupting Mount Vesuvius in Italy, are from abroad. Some have been posted and some have been bought as a collector's item.
The other item was a late 1920s photographic album containing 117 family snaps ranging from 1930-1932. The majority are labelled across a corner in fountain pen with the year and the location.
Sadly, none of the people depicted is named and there is nothing inside the album to say whose it was. However, I imagine many of the photos will scan well and clean up and we'll take a look at them on this blog in due course! Come back for a look at some point!
A postcard from my own collection this time. Cliftonville is an area of Margate in Kent. We stayed in a hotel on the seafront several times when I was around 14-17 and I remember it well if only for the rather lovely memory of being 15 and a girl rushing up to me in the street and flinging her arms round me and planting a smacker of a kiss on my cheek. I'm easily pleased like that...
This is not a rare card. On searching online for information about the Newgate Capway, all I managed to find were adverts for similar postcards. They were variously dated from 1905 onwards. Searching for Newgate Gap led to a little more information. The gap was a cutting through the cliffs, made by farmers who collected seaweed off the beach for rotting down as fertiliser. The bridge dates from 1861 and had a framework of iron with wooden decking. It was replaced in 1907 by one with steel and concrete with sides encased in decorative marble. This in turn was refurbished in 2005 with the marble smashed off and replaced with bricks and concrete - very classy...
The message side of the card is a trifle hard to read... Even the postal franking is a bit hit and miss. You can make out "10AM OC 1 09" so I would hazard that it was posted in October either on the first or between the 10-19th in 1909. Hence it showed a bridge no longer in existence at the time of posting! The written message has fared even less well, having faded just about to nothing. Most of the address though is readable: It was sent to a ship - SS Dartmoor or perhaps Dartmouth (?) care of the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company at Victoria Dock, Canning Town.
The cargo ship SS Dartmoor was built at South Shields in 1892 and was sunk during the First World War by U-Boat UC50 en-route from Gibralter to Garston (Liverpool) with a cargo of ore. A search for SS Dartmouth failed to turn up any relevant information - possibly exacerbated by the fact that the town of Dartmouth has a lot to do with ships...
To try to read the message I used Adobe Photoshop to play with brightness and contrast, hue and density of colour, until most of the message could be deciphered. I'm missing the name of the person it refers to I'm afraid, but this was no "Wish You Were Here" message. It says:
"D.16 (or 46). P----- had an accident, call if able." It is signed I (or J) with a long surname beginning with H - Hunnisford, Houseman - it could almost be anything. The card raises more questions than it answers. Which is part of the appeal of postcard collecting. The photos are interesting, particularly those from the beginning of the 20th century, but just on a very few occasions, the message gives a brief, but not always complete, glimpse of events that affected the people involved. And without asking to plough through any old documents of ship departures from Victoria Dock (it would have been the Royal Victoria Dock by this date) this is where we must leave the unfortunate P-----.
A couple of weeks ago I was celebrating the end of a long-running task - the scanning of some 700 postcards from the Hayley Easthope collection. Readers may well have been wondering when to expect to see them, but with so many postcards from so many different countries it was a daunting job trying to think of how to present them!
So here's the first instalment. Wales is the country most represented outside England so today's selection are all of Wales. There are around 80 postcards from Wales so to try to arrange them into suitably sized collections, today's postcards are all older monochrome shots. They were mostly published as black and white, but there are a couple of sepia treated examples.
Llangwyfan Old Church, (The Church In The Sea) Aberffraw, nr. Rhosneigr. This tiny 13th century church of St Cwyfan stands on the south west coast of Anglesey. The land on which it stands was once part of the island of Anglesey itself, but erosion of the land by the sea sometime after 1770 caused the land around the church to be cut off at high tide, forming an island known as Cribinau. By the early 1900s the erosion was encroaching on the churchyard and some graves were lost to the sea, at which point a wall was built around the remains of the island to protect it.
In the latter half of the 18th century a very strange thing occurred. In 1766 Dr Thomas Bowles, an ageing English priest, was appointed to St Cwyfan's church. The congregation numbered 500 and of those, 99% spoke Welsh but no English. Dr Bowles spoke English but no Welsh... Not surprisingly the locals demanded he be replaced. A court in 1773 found that he should not have been appointed to a Welsh-speaking parish, but now that he had been - and legally - he could not be removed. In the event, he stayed for another ten months before he passed away, leaving the way open for his replacement by a Welsh-speaking priest.
Wrexham, The Yale Tomb & Sundial. Specifically this is the tomb of the exotically named Elihu Yale, born in 1649 in Boston, Massachusetts. He worked for the British East India Company and whilst in their employ became Governor of Fort St George in Madras. He made himself extremely rich mostly by flaunting the rules of the company and entering into secret deals. After five years he was removed by the East India Company and returned to live at Plas Grono, the family mansion near Wrexham in Wales, where he proceeded to enjoy spending his accumulated wealth. Part of it was spent in response to a request for help from the Collegiate School of Connecticut. Yale sent them some books, a portrait of King George I and some goods which were sold for the very considerable sum (at the time) of £800. A new building was erected and called Yale in gratitude and later Yale became the name of the entire institution.
The seaside resort of Tenby is one of Britain's most westerly towns, but still manages to have a seafront facing east on the south coast of Wales. This gives it a sheltered harbour and it was an early trading post between Wales and the Norsemen in the 9th century. There are remains of 13th century town walls. Castle Hill, seen in the top left segment of the postcard, started off as a hill fort and the stone castle was built following the Norman Conquest by the Earls of Pembroke. Meg and Ern sent this postcard to an address in Wellington, Shropshire in July 1959. They had attended a wedding on the previous Saturday and had then journeyed by train to reach Tenby that night. Perhaps they were the two who got married? The message finishes with a somewhat breathless "See you sometime - don't know when!"
The Promenade, Colwyn Bay, North Wales. Colwyn Bay is a resort roughly halfway along the north coast of Wales in the county of Denbighshire, facing onto the Irish Sea. It enjoys a mild climate thanks to the wind passing over the mountains of Snowdonia to the south which then dry out and get warmer as they descend towards Colwyn Bay. A lovely row of old-style motor cars along the Promenade with a half-cab single deck bus approaching in the distance. The card was sent back to Wellington, Shropshire on 11 July 1956 during which week "A heat wave decided to come too!"
Erddig Hall, Wrexham. Erddig Hall is a National Trust stately home (voted the UK's "favourite historic house" by Britain's Best). It was built by the High Sheriff of Denbighshire, Joshua Edisbury, in 1684-87. It was sold to John Mellor, Master of Chancery, in 1714 and on his death in 1733 passed to the Yorke family who owned it through several generations through 240 years until it was given to the National Trust in 1973.
Several years earlier a shaft from Bersham Colliery had collapsed underneath the house, causing a subsidence of five feet, requiring a substantial sum of money to save the house. Compensation paid for the necessary structural underpinning, but 63 acres of parkland had to be sold to finance the restoration of the house.
Writing on 21 July 1954, in a hand that turns each of the capital letters F, S and T to a J, the cursive lower-case is thankfully easier to read. "Just to let you know we are having a nice time and lovely weather. We are getting out somewhere each day. Hope Rex hasn't been fretting. We shall stay until the last train on Friday but don't wait for us if that is too late for you. All are well here and your Dad and I are feeling better for the change. Love to both, Mum."
Wrexham, The Cup and Saucer, Erddig Park. Three years later, Mum makes the return journey but obviously alone, for she writes: "Just to let you know I am having a nice time and a good rest. Could manage a month like this, shall be home Friday. Love to both, Mum."
The Cup and Saucer, situated close to Erddig Hall was a pool or font, filled with water by a hydraulic ram which forced water uphill from the nearby river.
The Gateway, Acton Hall. Another once-stately home near to Wrexham, Acton Hall was demolished in 1954 having become badly dilapidated. It had once been owned by the Jeffreys family - they who included the infamous Judge Jeffreys, the Hanging Judge, in the 17th century.
The card was sent again in 1954 back to the same address as the Erddig Hall postcard, by the same Mum and Dad. The postmark is missing the exact date but presumably this was from a different visit as although there is the same hope that "Rex is ok" (what was the matter with that dog / cat / guinea pig / goldfish / milkman?), on this occasion the absent parents are due to arrive on the "last train on Wednesday." Perhaps this time because the "weather is very wet."
Harbour and Beach, Saundersfoot. Saundersfoot is a hop, skip and jump up the coast from Tenby. The harbour dates only from Parliament granting permission in 1829, though coal from the many mines around the village had been loaded onto boats from the beach for centuries. Another card with a line of cars of the 1950s. This time a more modern light-coloured box saloon can be seen third from the right. This card has also gone back to Wellington, Shropshire but was sent by Meg (due to be half of the couple Meg and Ern who we met earlier) on 12 June 1957. She writes: "Having a lovely time here at Tenby. Weather perfect, been in for a swim once or twice every day. It has a beautiful stretch of sandy beach."
The Two Bridges, Menai Strait. The Menai Strait separates the island of Anglesey from the Welsh mainland. Cross from the Welsh mainland to Anglesey and turn left and you come to the village whose name trips so easily from the tongue: Llanfairpwillgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwll-llantysiliogogogoch... As the old joke goes: I asked the guy behind the cafe counter to say the name of the place really slowly. He said "B-u-r-g-e-r K-i-n-g...". This time another branch of the family is roaming Wales and writing back to Shropshire. On the 1st of July 1954 the message went "Thursday. Shall be pleased to see you at the usual time on Sunday. Order a fine sunny day. Love Aunty P, Uncle E."
Horse Shoe Falls, Llangollen. This is a 460-feet (140m) long weir, stocking a pool from which water can be released into the Llangollen Canal. It dates from 1908. This card is unused and therefore cannot be dated.
Some three years ago whilst buying some 78 rpm records I was asked if I collected postcards as well. On saying yes, a large cardboard box appeared and it was given to me freely by the wonderful Hayley Easthope. I rashly promised to send a CD of the scanned images once I had got through them.
They went on the back burner for a while at my excitement in going through the 78s - about a third of which are still waiting to be looked at and played. But every now and then the box has come out and I've spent an hour or so scanning them and it seemed never to make a dent in them! Last weekend I finished going through them and when I checked the folder that I had been scanning to there were 700 files in it. There's been a lot of those odd hours or so over the three years!
One set of postcards from the collection has already featured here over several posts. Hayley's collection included the postcards sent by World War One soldier Edgar Pedley and they gave a fascinating insight into one man's experiences in the war. (Being a blog, the entries will appear in reverse order)
This article features a book of postcards brought back from another war. Hayley's father brought this book of photos back from Belgium at the end of World War 2. They were never used, they were brought back as a souvenir. The book is intact, though a little fragile from being opened and viewed many times over the last 70 years.
The Mannekin Pis of Brussels is a fairly small statue of a little boy relieving his bladder. Known in UK popularly as The Pissing Boy it either delights you with its innocence or disgusts you with its vulgarity.
The Belgians must be really proud of it because of all of the postcards I have from Belgium (not just the ones from Hayley's collection) the percentage of them that include this particular water feature is over 70%!
That's a staggering amount. The majority of the ones that don't feature it are views of Bruges. A place I must really visit myself one of these days.
So far my only trips through (rather than to) Belgium have been on coach holidays to Austria or Amsterdam. We did stop to look at a Belgian chocolate factory once which put me off Belgian chocolate for life as I watched a chocolate-covered bluebottle struggling as it went round and round a mixing wheel. I suspect in real life the chocolate on that wheel was for public display rather than for eating, but they really should have checked it once in a while!
Ok, I'll shut up for a while and show the rest of the postcards from this book.
Looking at the cartoons - and in particular at the clothes of the people depicted you could be forgiven for thinking this book of postcards dated from the earlier war of 1914-18...
...but then, in amongst them is this one with a hemline above the knee which clearly belongs from the mid 1940s onwards.
And I'll finish with another postcard of the Mannekin Pis that shows a real photograph. I'm sure today the water would be supplied from a pipe hidden in his leg. Perhaps the pain of the pipe makes up for the embarrassment he has caused the more inhibited viewers over the years!
Many thanks Hayley. More postcards from the Hayley Easthope Collection to come every now and then!
